Confidence ebbed and flowed back in a tidal wave over the last week on world share markets. As a main determinant of economic growth, financial confidence promotes boom and bust cycles. Like a piece of flotsam on a sea of change, Britain still goes with the current.

If confidence in job creation, low inflation and education slips, the country and currency could be on a slippery slope of long duration.

Considering the blows it has sustained over the past year, the UK must certainly be credited with robustness. Although manufacturing has suffered, growth in the service sector has continued to accelerate, with many jobs being created at call centres.

However, when falling production overshadows the boom in entertainment, legal, financial and other services, a crisis of confidence is on the cards. And bankers set the tone with their loan activity.

The catastrophe in upland farming and some other areas of agriculture directly affects only a few tens of thousands of workers and landowners. But it is the heaviest possible thrust to the heart of the country.

The change wrought by the industrial revolution depended on coal and textiles, but agriculture and shipping remained important, particularly after they installed advanced equipment.

All are now pale shadows of their former prosperity. The dependence on imported food, feed and household goods made by foreign-owned manufacturers loyal only to the most efficient sites and costings is virtually complete.

A serious shortage of native managerial ability has been apparent for years. After the reversals at M&S, Napoleon's gibe that we are a nation of shopkeepers hardly applies any longer. The supply of trained, dedicated people seems appallingly short, necessitating a reliance on immigration, often from countries that are themselves at an early stage of development.

But business confidence remains remarkably resilient. Warnings of recession are coming mainly from abroad. Although many smaller or newer firms are suffering as the availability of funds diminishes, few giants have come out with depressing forecasts.

But what of the banks, that vast, pervasive area of the modern economy that has left farming, engineering and much of the rest of traditional business far behind in terms of employment and profitability?

A flood of brokers' surveys this week urges investment in the sector, with targets set for much higher individual valuations for all of the largest banks.

There was a short-lived rebound in their prices, though it was less than among a handful of technology issues, especially in software, where banks are big spenders.

Excluding a resurgence in bad debts - the ultimate crunch for an economy - the big high street banking names with large back offices catering for wealthy investors and newer savers under the government's incentive schemes are sitting pretty.

Good margins are achievable on mortgages as interest rates come down - faster for savers than borrowers, of course.

Above all, the rise in the wealth of older people and some highly successful business founders and leisure stars has opened up income flows from commissions and pension provision.

Deposits are being overtaken by investment activity as lucrative earnings providers.

Although moves into bancassurance have not been as fast as expected - except perhaps in the case of Lloyds TSB, the most profitable bank - the trend is strongly upward.

Certainly, the foreign-owned competition has become particularly strong in fund management and broking, but a dozen UK banks still do well in an area, which is more advanced than in other large European countries, despite the much greater power of their universal banks on the international scene.

The snag is that the banks already constitute a much higher proportion of the UK economy than in other industrial countries, as reflected even in off-peak stock market valuations.

This bears out the dominance of the services sector as production goes down the drain. On a more cynical note, no sector of the economy has more of a vested interest in reasonably steady conditions at the end of the fiscal year than the banks and other institutions offering tax-free savings vehicles.

Even though small investors' confidence has been shaken, they should seize the opportunity and take up some of the simpler offers.

The inflow into Isas may still exceed the billions being lost to the economy by the livestock disaster and tourist slump. There is a wide choice of holdings, including some resort to other currencies.

If confidence in UK plc takes a tumble and/or recession spreads round the world, a safety-first approach and a larger and wider spread of investments is called for.

As for national identity, the UK is starting to look more like wheeler-dealing, densely populated Hong Kong than any nearby country.